Meagan Hatcher-Mays On MeidasTouch Legal AF Podcast: “This Court Under John Roberts’s Purview Has Never Been Independent”
Roberts Court Wants it Both Ways, Paving the Way for MAGA Agenda While Insisting on Judicial Independence
Washington, D.C. — At a celebration of the 125th anniversary of federal courts in the Western District of New York last week, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts spoke on the importance of judicial independence, calling it necessary to “check the excesses of the Congress or the executive.” But while Roberts, without naming names, publicly laments President Donald Trump’s defiance of court orders and repeated attacks on the judicial branch, he continues to align himself with the MAGA agenda and works to strip back public rights while attempting to bolster the court’s reputation as an independent arbiter of justice. This week, United for Democracy Senior Advisor Meagan Hatcher-Mays joined Court Accountability Co-founder and Executive Director Alex Aronson on the Legal AF podcast to debunk Roberts’s defense of his court’s independence.
KEY POINT: “This is all part of this kind of very big, dark money scheme to capture the Supreme Court for wealthy conservative interests… [The Supreme Court justices] were all picked to be a part of this project. It was not to be independent. It was to hand power to the people who are already the most powerful people in our country. And we've seen it in all of their big ticket rulings, from labor to the environment to abortion to voting rights. Those cases never shake out in the direction of the people who actually make up this country.”
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Alex Aronson, Court Accountability Action:
Chief Justice John Roberts has real concerns about threats to judicial independence.That was the message he conveyed to a group of over 600 judges and lawyers in Upstate New York this week, in rare public comments that the New York Times reported. John Roberts, for the second time, publicly criticized the Trump administration and MAGA Republicans, although not by name of course, for leveling impeachment threats against lower court judges who had simply ruled against them usually in a preliminary posture. He said impeachment is not how you register disagreement with a decision. And then later in the remarks, he talked about judicial independence. He says it's central, saying that the job of the judiciary is obviously to decide cases, but in the course of that, to check the excesses of Congress or the executive, and that does require a degree of independence.
But does John Roberts really care about what's going on? Does this really concern him so much? Here's a guy who literally laid the groundwork for the current state of autocracy that we're living in in America, broadly unleashing money in politics through the Citizens United decision, green lighting gerrymandering and voter suppression, and of course last year in Trump v. United States, announcing sweeping executive powers and immunities from prosecution that Trump has picked up and is using like a cudgel to destroy the basic framework of our country. And here we have the situation now: Roberts and the Trump administration seemingly at odds in so many of these cases, but under the surface, very much aligned in terms of the long-term direction they're trying to move the country. So much alignment between the funders and the operatives behind Trump's Project 2025 and the Roberts court capture scheme and the agenda they are driving.
And to dig into this dynamic, I wanted to bring in Meagan Hatcher-Mayes, senior advisor at United for Democracy, my friend, my partner in this work. Always great to have you with us, Meagan. You wrote this amazing piece on this, saying John Roberts does not care about this at all. This is all spin. He's, you know, in my estimation, probably the best political spin doctor and politician in Washington. And here we have some of those dynamics playing out. Tell us about your piece and sort of how you're seeing this situation as these big tensions come up to the courts.
Meagan Hatcher-Mays, United for Democracy:
Yeah, I mean I think to your question of, you know, does John Roberts care about this? No, he definitely doesn't. I think what he cares about is the perception of not just the court but of him personally. I don't think he wants to be perceived as somebody who's handing sort of political victories to Donald Trump or to Senate Republicans or House Republicans, even though that is in fact what he has been doing and, I think, would like to continue to do. He just doesn't want people to know that that's what he's doing. So I really get the sense from him that he is really not a fan of the means through which Donald Trump is trying to achieve his goals, but he's fine with the ends. He is totally fine with — I don't think he really cares about mass deportation. I don't think he really cares that much about Kilmar Abrego Garcia personally. I think he just feels this illusion of impropriety through which the Trump administration is trying to achieve these goals — that bothers him because he doesn't want the court to be under a microscope.
Because he and the other MAGA justices on the court — that's what they got picked to do. They got picked by the Federalist Society types and the dark moneyed, right wing, judicial activists. The reason they got picked was to dismantle the federal government, so check. Got the voting rights act, check. Overturning Roe v Wade, check check check check check. But he doesn't want people to think of the court as political, which is a very tricky dance that he is not doing a very good job of moving or navigating, I don't think, right at this moment. It's hard to do the corruption dance when your colleagues are comically corrupt, you know, taking these ridiculous lavish vacations and stuff.
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About United for Democracy
United for Democracy is a diverse and growing coalition of more than 100 grassroots organizations, labor unions, and advocates for reproductive rights, gun violence prevention, the environment, workers rights and more, all representing tens of millions of Americans. The new nationwide campaign launched to educate Americans about the impact today’s Supreme Court is having on their lives, freedoms, and democracy — and call on Congress to rein in its unchecked powers.